CHAPTER ONE—The leem lovers demand Jikai

"Blow the winds! Roar the gales!" I had shouted, exulting in my newly won freedom. "Bear me on to Valka and my high fortress of Esser Rarioch! Blow, winds, carry me home to my Delia, my Delia of the Blue Mountains, my Delia of Delphond!"

The lie to my boastful shouts was given by that ominous scrap of sail, striped black and amber, intermittently lifting over the horizon rim to the eastward. As our galleon bore on northward so that sail dogged us. I fancied I knew what beings manned her, what devils they were, and I went down to the armory and sharpened up a sword and saw most carefully to the harness of armor Captain Lars Ehren had laid out for me.

"By Vox, Prince!" said Captain Lars, his square spade beard thrusting from his blunt chin like the ram of a swifter. "We will send them scurrying back to their filthy dens with their tails between their legs!"

"Aye, Captain Lars." I looked at him, there in the armory of his galleon Ovvend Barynth, the iron harness cold in my hands. "Have you fought the leem lovers before?"

"No, Majister."

Concerned lest my tone lead him to suspect all the disquiet with which I faced the prospect of an action with these reiving ships from the Southern Ocean, I hastened to add: "I have. We exposed enough of their tripes to find out they are diffs like any other human being."

He laughed hugely. The galleon surged through the swell, her timbers creaking, the rush of water echoing along her stout lenken sides, the snap of blocks and the rattling of rigging distant but ever-present sounds. It is not easy to disconcert a galleon captain of Vallia, that proud island empire of Kregen.

"I have heard of them, Majister. Can you speak of your fight?"

I thought of Viridia the Render, and of how that pirate lady and I, as a member of her render crew, had fought off one of those reiving ships from the Southern Ocean. Here, south of the equator off the eastern coast of the continent of Havilfar, the sea was known as the Ocean of Clouds. Viridia and her crew had escaped from the leem lovers' ship only under the cover of a sudden gale. We had got away, but it had been a near thing.

"They fight dirty, Captain. I always look for the good in a man, and tolerate anyone until he proves himself evil or traitorous; I fancy I would have to look rather too long to find any decent humanity in these leem lovers."

"I have heard stories, Majister. Unpleasant stories." Captain Ehren buckled up his armor with the help of young Gil, one of the armorer's apprentices. He grunted with the effort of drawing in his stomach beneath the cuirass. "These shants carry their aura of evil about with 'em."

There are many names for these marauding ships and people from around the curve of the world; "shant" was merely one. We stood up, and stretched and wriggled until we were comfortable, then we clambered up the ladders and so came out onto the quarterdeck. The mingled streaming lights of the Suns of Scorpio blazed down, that glorious twinned fusion of opaz radiance, the emerald and the ruby, pouring in molten floods upon the sea and the ship. By Zair! It was good to be alive on such a day! I did not forget that I carried in my head half the secrets of the airboats that were going to prove of such great value to Vallia, my home on Kregen, in the inevitable war with the hostile empire of Hamal. That information must reach Vallia. I drew dark mental pictures of the holocausts of horror that would follow if Hamal attacked Vallia, suddenly, treacherously, fleets of skyships raining from the skies in steel and fire and destruction.

The first lieutenant, a Hikdar, saluted.

"She stays above the horizon longer, sir," he said to Captain Ehren.

To cheer them, I said: "It is certain she recognizes us as Vallian. That, my friends, gives pause to her cramph of a captain. It makes him think twice, does that, before he attacks a galleon of Vallia!"

There was a little rumbling of oaths from the officers on the quarterdeck, not a few puzzled and half-recriminating glances in my direction. But I had given Captain Ehren strict orders. We were not to put our helm over and go roaring down to tangle with the shant. I had forbidden these proud men of Vallia, seadogs all, to do what they would naturally have done. This, alone, made them uneasy.

There was certain vital information about the fliers I had to take back to Vallia. Yes, I could see that. But, also, I could see that in the next bur or so I would be solely concerned with the immediate situation. Hopeful plans for the future were not going to be of the slightest use when that Opaz-forsaken leem lover at last decided to attack. Everything, then, for us all would be concentrated into the immediate present.

Captain Lars Ehren knew his business. This galleon had been on her way to the island realm of Hyrklana, farther south, to attempt to buy airboats there when the supply had stopped from Hamal. The Hamalians had reacted by sending two of their tremendous skyships to sink the two Vallian galleons. They had sunk one: Nikvove of Evir had burned. Though I'd been treacherously drugged and hauled aboard to be flung down as a flaming human torch upon the Vallians, I had managed to gain control of one of the skyships, Hirrume Warrior. By using Hirrume Warrior I had contrived to ram the other Hamalese skyship, Pride of Hanitcha and wreck and sink them both.

When Ovvend Barynth, commanded by Lars Ehren, had picked me out of the sea I had managed to convince his passengers, the deputation to Hyrklana, that our true salvation lay back home in Vallia, where with the information I had we could ourselves manufacture the airboats.

Recalling that fight in the Hamalese skyship I supposed it to be just another battle through which I had gone, willy-nilly. I had fought hard, yes, like a battle-crazed maniac, you might think; but the reasons for my conduct were clear and self-evident. Now, again, I faced a challenge. I bear no man, be he apim like myself or diff like so many others on Kregen, any grudges. Alone, I reserve the right to defend myself and my loved ones, and if this makes me a sinner —as, indeed, it does, it does —then I remain condemned never to roam the Plains of Mist with my clansmen when the last days come.

Copyright © 1975, Kenneth Bulmer.